


feel the beat from the tambourine

by triplesalto



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Canonical Temporary Character Death, Fix-It, Gen, Regeneration, Will Inevitably Be Jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2018-12-02 17:37:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11514189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triplesalto/pseuds/triplesalto
Summary: One time Bill dances, one time the Doctor dances, and one time they dance together.





	feel the beat from the tambourine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ruuger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruuger/gifts).



For someone who insists that he is very particular about time, the Doctor is surprisingly forgetful of it himself. Bill turns up every day at six exactly, but more often than not his office is empty. 

Sometimes he’s in the next room, playing his guitar. Sometimes he’s making tea. (He never asked Bill what she takes, but he makes it just the way she likes it every time. Unlike Nardole.) Sometimes he’s sitting in his box, and only comes out when he hears Bill moving about. (She wonders what he does in there. Men and their toys. Is it even wired for lights? Maybe he does his grading in there, getting in a properly claustrophobic grumpy mood to rain down the red ink.)

Occasionally he’s gone entirely, like today. Bill supposes he’ll come clattering up the stairs any minute, or send Nardole to tell her that he’s been delayed. Research? Committee meeting, perhaps? She’s a bit hazy on what the Doctor’s administrative duties might entail. He certainly knew how to pull the right strings to get her university paperwork in order.

While she waits, she has a little snoop. Oh, not anything that would make her blush if the Doctor or Nardole came in. She’s not likely to endanger this tutorial! But she looks at the gadgets in the cup on his desk, at the pictures the Doctor keeps in places of honour. An old black-and-white photo, probably his mum as a girl, and a colour one of a smiling, happy woman. His wife? She can hardly imagine the Doctor away from the university, but of course professors have personal lives too. He probably has two or three grownup children, and grandchildren who love to visit his office and play in his box. Maybe Bill reminds him of his daughter or something. Might explain why he took a shine to her. 

She quickly tires of what little she can surmise from a cursory inspection. Thinking of the Doctor as ordinary is strange, though she’s not sure why. She pulls out her phone and starts a playlist, swaying to the beat. That’s it. There’s the rhythm that brings a smile to her face and a bounce to her step.

Bill loves music. She loves the math of it, the structure and the beauty; the Doctor talks about math like it was a living thing, and every time he does it feels like magic. Everything is interconnected for the Doctor – music and math and physics and quantum mechanics and so much more. She can’t quite grasp the full scope of it, not yet, no matter how many papers he sets her or how many soaring explanations he gives, but every tutorial is fascinating. She wants more, always more.

Right now she closes her eyes and lets the music take her, lets the sway expand. Movement and music, math and rhythm, it all comes together in a perfect whole.

“My office is not a dance club,” the Doctor says behind her, before she’s even registered the opening of the door.

Bill’s eyes fly open. A month ago, she might’ve been embarrassed, though embarrassment has never really been a big thing for Bill. But she knows the Doctor now. His mind may race ahead faster than she can follow, but he is always willing to reframe an explanation (or to lead her into puzzling it out for herself). He may set impossible questions and have strict demands, he may give her books to read that are bigger than her head, but he is never unkind. He may look fierce and grumpy, but he’s a big softie at heart, she can tell. His grandchildren can probably always find a packet of biscuits in his desk drawer, or a bag of jelly babies in his pocket.

“I bet you like a good beat, Doctor,” she says, smiling at him. He’s carrying a large stack of books, which he drops on his desk with a thud. (The pictures wobble slightly but stay upright.) He’s been at the library, then. “I’ve heard you play your guitar, you can’t fool me.”

The Doctor raises an eyebrow. “Music and dancing are two different things.”

“Movement and math and rhythm and music,” Bill says. The song’s still going, and she throws in a few more moves before she turns it off. “All interconnected, yeah?”

The eyebrow goes back down. That’s the look he gets when she’s on the right track. She’ll take it any day.

“Don’t worry,” she says, sitting down and starting to rummage in her bag for her latest paper. “I won’t make you join me.”

“That’ll be the day,” Nardole says under his breath, coming in with the tea things.

❧

It’s a quiet moment between adventures, just her and the Doctor in the TARDIS. The Doctor’s doing a little maintenance under the console, and Bill leans against the railing and watches him, pleasantly relaxed.

There’s been a lot of running today, and it’s nice to just rest for a change. There were these alien invaders disguised as lab rats, yeah? And some beleaguered microbiologists who were damn trigger-happy – never piss off a scientist in a fully-stocked biological weapons lab. Although to be fair to the microbiologists, lab rats suddenly attacking in armed swarms would probably scare Bill shitless too. 

Anyway, after a lot of running and dodging crossfire, the Doctor managed to figure out the situation and negotiate a ceasefire. (The breakthrough had been the invaders admitting that perhaps the microbiologists’ planet had only been _inadvertently_ cosmically rude in an incident last year, and honour could be satisfied with an abject apology instead of blood.)

Now they’re about to fly off into the vortex towards home, back to chips and tea and Nardole and the essay the Doctor will no doubt set Bill on a topic somehow inspired by some aspect of their experience today. It feels a little funny, combining academics with _this_ , but Bill is determined to get her degree. Flying in the TARDIS doesn’t pay her rent, and she’s definitely not planning on serving chips the rest of her life.

“There you are,” the Doctor says, muffled. “Better?”

He’s not talking to her, he’s talking to the TARDIS. He does that. Bill doesn’t mind; she talks to her dead mum, she’s got no room to judge. It’s nice to think aloud sometimes. You can almost imagine the person you’re talking to is talking back.

“Fixed it?” she asks, as the Doctor emerges.

“Back in time for tea,” he says. 

Bill watches as the Doctor’s hands begin to move over the console. She doesn’t understand how the TARDIS flies, and perhaps she never will; if she didn’t know better, she’d think that the TARDIS is alive. Perhaps she is! Time and space are strange, wonderful things.

The Doctor moves gracefully, spinning here and sliding there, stepping around the console in an intricate choreography, his face intent. Here a lever, there a button, the hum of the TARDIS changing timbre as he goes. Together they form a greater whole, the song of the TARDIS and the movement of the Doctor –

“Doctor,” Bill says, delighted. “You’re dancing!”

They’re flying now, spinning around the vortex, heading towards home. The Doctor’s hands fall from the console, and he turns to face her. “Dancing?”

“You were dancing,” Bill repeats. “Moving to the rhythm of the music.”

“I was flying the TARDIS,” he says.

She grins. “Call it whatever you want. That was dancing. You’re not half bad! Mind, you still run like a penguin with its arse on fire, but your dancing could definitely be worse.”

The Doctor smiles. It transforms his face, that smile; she loves it. “I never said I didn’t dance. I said my office wasn’t a dance club.”

“And the TARDIS is?”

“The TARDIS,” he says, resting a hand on the console, “is anything and everything she desires to be.”

Bill could _swear_ that the TARDIS’s hum sounds pleased.

❧

“Doctor?” Bill calls, tentatively.

This is the place, she’s sure. She doesn’t know how the tears work, exactly, but she knows that the Doctor had tears in his eyes in this snowy glen not more than a few minutes ago. And where there are tears, there’s hope – where there are tears, it means the Doctor is alive. 

There! That shadow by the trees, already half-covered in snow. She’d know it anywhere. 

Even as she starts towards it, the door opens, and a bright shaft of light pierces the gloom. There’s a figure in the doorway, and Bill squints. The Doctor? It seems wrong, somehow, but who else would be in the TARDIS?

“Doctor?” she calls again.

The figure’s head comes up, and then it breaks into a run. No penguin, this, but an easy lope, and Bill’s heart skips a beat. (She’s not entirely sure why she _has_ a heart, now that she’s space oil, but she’ll figure it out.) 

As the figure nears her, Bill sees that it’s a woman, her blonde hair shining in the light from the TARDIS. A young woman, and yet there’s something ancient about her, something in the eyes. Like Missy, like the Master. 

A wild surmise strikes her. 

“Bill,” the woman says, her face blazing with happiness. 

Bill grins, shaky. “That’s me.”

“Bill,” the woman says again. Her hands come up, grasping Bill’s biceps, and then she’s whirling Bill around and around, spinning them in place. 

They are dancing in the snow together in the music of the starlight, breathless and alive. The woman’s joy is contagious; Bill may only have one heart, but it’s beating fast enough for two.

When they finally stop, Bill reaches a hand out to brush back the hair that’s falling into the woman’s face, helter-skelter. “You wouldn’t happen to be an ancient alien who never quite bothered to explain that he _changed faces_ , would you?”

The woman laughs, easy and free. “I told you Missy and I were boys together. You were always my best student. I knew you’d put it together.”

This is not quite her Doctor, not quite the man she will miss, the long slow ache behind her breastbone. Bill will mourn that man in her own time. She wishes she had more pictures; she will cherish the selfies and sneaky snapshots she does have, them together throughout time and space, from Victorian England to the end of the universe. No matter how old she gets, no matter how many galaxies she and Heather visit, she will never forget her Professor. 

But this is still the Doctor, and Bill smiles at her, then pulls her in for a hug. “Welcome back, Doctor,” she says into the Doctor’s ear.

Above them, the stars are glittering. Here in the snow, a new era dawns.

❧


End file.
